Stuck inside during the great bomb cyclone of 2026? Watched “Heated Rivalry” more times than you’d care to admit? Looking for some literary distractions? Here are some suggestions.
“She Is Here” (PM Press, 2026) by lesbian writer Nicola Griffith is a variety pack in a slim volume, part of the Outspoken Authors series. Beginning with “A Writer’s Manifesto,” Griffith incorporates five essays, four short stories, and four poems, into this collection. The “Wife” essay is a dissection of the word, while two of the essays take the form of letters. She rages against branding, takes offense at the misuse of LGBTQ, and offers a cautionary tale to authors of first books. In her “lesbian anthropology” short story “Cold Wind,” this reader could feel the Puget Sound chill even in South Florida.
You know how some novels read exactly like memoirs? Even with the author covering their bases with a disclaimer declaring it a work of fiction before you’ve turned the first page. Such is the case with “Coconut Grove Chronicles” (Know-Not Florida Press, 2025) by gay writer Matthew Bamberg. Like narrator Marvin, Bamberg spent his formative years in Miami’s Coconut Grove enclave at a time when the area was in the midst of the tremendous social and cultural changes that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. Incorporating humor and historical perspective, Bamberg invites readers into his personal time machine.
Originally published in 1982 by the now-defunct lesbian publishing house Persephone Press, “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” by groundbreaking Black, lesbian, feminist, activist, and poet Audre Lorde has been reissued in a stunning 2026 hardcover edition by Penguin Vitae. Including a new foreword by Evie Shockley and a new afterword by Melinda Goodman, the book, described as a “genre-fluid memoir,” came out when Lorde was 48, 10 years before her passing. Through her distinctive gift with language, Lorde does an exceptional job of not only capturing the essence of the times in which she lived, but also, and without hesitation, confidently represents her life (check out the “How I Became A Poet” section in the third chapter), both creative and personal.
Queer poet and musician (Girls in Trouble) Alicia Jo Rabins’ memoir “When We’re Born We Forget Everything” (Schocken, 2026) takes us on a journey from her suburban, secular Jewish home to Jerusalem. Interwoven with books of the Old Testament (Judges, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Proverbs, I Samuel) along with some of the significant women from the bible (Ruth, Noah’s wife Na’amah, Hannah, Judith, Queen Esther and Queen Vashti, Tamar, Potiphar’s wife), Rabins invites readers from all walks of life along on her quest for enlightenment.
Readers of all ages can learn something by reading “From the Fields to the Fight: How Jessica Govea Thorbourne Organized For Justice” (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2026) by Angela Quezada Padron with illustrations by non-binary artist Sol Salinas. Telling the story of the late labor activist Thorbourne (1947-2005), who began picking crops in the California fields at the age of four, and follows her life from youth activism to joining the United Farm Workers as an adult, and her essential part in the California Grape Boycott, becoming “one courageous woman doing her part for justice.”
A far more academic text than some of these other titles, “Gay Print Culture: A Transnational History of North America” (Duke, 2026) by Juan Carlos Mezo González takes a close look at “the relationship between transnational gay liberation politics, periodical, and images in Mexico, the United States, and Canada,” covering the early seventies through the mid-nineties. The book features an extensive chapter on legendary gay publisher Winston Leyland’s Gay Sunshine Press, including a photo by gay photographer David Greene.
